Female filmmakers steal the show

After #OscarsSoBlack and #MeToo movements, the world of film has shaken and hence changed tremendously. People of colour, as well as representatives of minorities, finally got the ability to speak and be heard in all corners of the world. Indiewire, as one of the most popular websites and spaces for independent filmmakers, started posting lists of the most prospective female filmmakers in the past years; major film festivals such as Cannes, Sundance, South by Southwest, and Tribeca began committing to greater representation of the female directors in their selections. And the trend only continues to grow in 2019.

Without making unsubstantiated statements, Red Rock Entertainment film investment team presents some facts from the past and the future. Back in 2008, there was a case when the production president of a major Hollywood studio pronounced that his company is not planning to produce any more films with female leads since they are bad box office bets. The response of the publicity (as represented by The New York Times reporter Manohla Dargis) was firm yet solitary: “it is hard to believe that anyone in a position of Hollywood power would be so stupid as to actually say what many in that town think: Women can’t direct. Women can’t open movies. Women are a niche. '' In 2018, Martha Lauzen, the executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film at San Diego State University, reports that the numbers don’t lie – the percentage of female directors rose in 2018-2019 by 4% if compared to the 2016-2017 time frame.

In 2019, according to Cathy Schulman, who is a co-founder of the gender equity council called ReFrame and the board president Emerita of Women in Film, the film industry, meaning the studios, became more “open-minded” when it comes to hiring female directors and writers for the production of the content that is not necessarily aimed at women and girls. However, it is essential to point out that even today there are not so many emerging female directors. According to Schulman, this situation is not related to gender at all. Big studios have always been unwilling to give their big productions to the so-called emerging no-names. And this is, in fact, the initial reason why females in filmmaking struggle so much. It is the eternal issue of the new kid on the block: one needs experience and projects to become someone, yet no one is willing to offer those projects to gain experience.

Of course, even though these struggles do exist, women in filmmaking begin stealing the show from the males. For example, just recently Angelina Jolie confirmed her participation in the new Marvel TV-series called Eternals. While in the past most of Marvel’s projects were male-led, this project is being directed by Chloé Zhao, an emerging and yet already acknowledged female directors. Besides that, the Marvel studio has also given a chance to Cate Shortland to direct another film of theirs – a stand-alone Black Widow with Scarlett Johansson playing the main character. At the same time, Warner Bros. has also confirmed that the Chinese-American filmmaker Cathy Yan will direct Birds of Prey starring Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. And do not forget about Ava DuVernay who landed The New Gods comic-book adaptation with DC. 

Besides the main-stream filmmaking, Gary Collins from Red Rock Entertainment points out that the layer of indie-filmmaking has also been swept by the artistic and talented female filmmakers. For instance, Sundance Film Festival last year started a trend on Twitter with #AsianFemaleExcellence after Lulu Wang’s The Farewell and Late Night by Nisha Ganatra got major deals with one of the biggest distributors exiting today: Amazon Studios and A24. And the more examples of great female work in filmmaking comes, the greater becomes the diversity of the industry around the world. According to the study of Lauzen back in 2015, this fact is simply explained: women tend to hire more women than men do (52% of films that were directed by women had female writers working for them while only 8% of male-led films had female writers in their crew). 

And to finalize the point, in 2017-2018 TV cycle, there were 27% of women working as directors, writers, creators, producers and executive producers, cinematographers and editors for the broadcast TV. The more the industry develops, the more jobs are offered to the females in the TV industry. Owing to the fact that streaming marketing is related to smaller risks and hence losses in case of a failure, studios producing such shows and programmes are more likely to offer a position to the female filmmakers. As a result, in the past couple of years, female film-world expert began to expand their power on this side of filmmaking. So if you are an emerging or struggling female filmmakers, try starting your career from the streaming positions – you will get it here at 25% more likely plus you will gain the required experience to land a huge project in the future.